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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28673430">draw a blank and call my name</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_haunting_of_four/pseuds/HyfrydCymru'>HyfrydCymru (a_haunting_of_four)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hetalia: Axis Powers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Amnesia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:33:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,797</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28673430</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_haunting_of_four/pseuds/HyfrydCymru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s him who the nurses call when he is at his worst. When frustration gets the better of him and he feels like shattering every bottle, ripping off every line that’s keeping his vitals stable. He stays the night when they’ll let him, and he’s there to shush Alasdair back to sleep when he’s afraid to close his eyes, and too proud to admit that what he fears the most are not the dreams but the possibility that he might slip away again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>England/Scotland (Hetalia)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>draw a blank and call my name</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Where’s Arthur?<br/></em>
</p><p>He can feel hands on him, pressure on the side of his neck, and holding down his chest. Voices, and a flurry of motion all around him. Something ripped open, metal on a tray. A phone ringing shrilly from very far away.</p><p>He can vaguely recall bright lights, and the screeching of sirens. Shouting for something, someone—</p><p>Arthur. <em>Where’s Arthur?</em></p><p>“--Mr Campbell? Alasdair, can you hear me?”</p><p>He can.</p><p>“Alasdair, I need you to open your eyes. Open your eyes, Alasdair.”</p><p>The voice is starting to irk him, loud in what feels like a too-small space. Pulling him awake each time he begins to feel himself slipping away. He wishes that they would stop touching him, would let him turn away from the lights overhead, but he can’t move to raise his hands or twist his neck. Thinks that maybe he has been strapped down.</p><p>“Alasdair, if you can hear me, could you make a fist for me?”</p><p>It should frighten him, he thinks, but with every second that passes he is beginning to forget if this is something he should be worried about at all. He isn’t sure whether he was able to follow the voice’s instructions, but they’ve stopped asking so he must have. Or perhaps they’ve stopped trying. They could be asking still, and he might simply not be able to hear it.</p><p>He feels one last flash of cloying panic when he tries to speak and finds that his jaw won’t move to shape the words—like there is not enough air in his lungs to sustain them.  </p><p>After that, there is only the exhaustion pulling him under.</p><p>He won’t remember calling Arthur’s name the next time he opens his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>He slips in and out of consciousness for hours after they release him from the ICU, and the first days blur together. There isn’t much to break the monotony of stretches of time when he is lucid. Most of the time he is alone. It strikes him as odd, that they would have him in a private room instead of the ward. If someone explained why to him he can’t remember.</p><p>In any case, Alasdair is glad enough for the privacy.</p><p>He tries, and fails, to remember the nurses’ names and faces for the first week that he is awake. It is only a little easier after that. When they start allowing him visitors he has to brace himself.</p><p>He recognises some of them, vaguely. The man with the long hair and the pressed suits. (“Francis,” he kindly reminds him each time, like it is no odd thing to forget his best friend’s name. Alleged best friend.) The young woman who’d come by only once and looked so much like the man besides him that she could be…</p><p>
  <em>His sister. They have another brother, too. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And they are all strangers.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The nurses usher them out, firm and professional, whenever he gets too overwhelmed—which is often— and the pressure behind his eyes becomes a blinding pain. They tell him it’ll pass with time, and that he’s doing very well, all thing’s considered. He might believe them more if he was strong enough to piss standing.</p><p>He says as much to his doctor and while it doesn’t earn him more than a raised eyebrow from him it gains him a laugh from…</p><p>“Have you taken your pills?”</p><p>“Fuck the pills.” Alasdair still hasn’t gotten used to how grainy his voice sounds. Like he’s coughed up a lung recently. “Later.”</p><p>When he makes the effort to sit up he lets the man by his bedside carefully support his shoulders. Anyone else he would shrug off as he does Beilschmidt every time he drags him off to another endless physical therapy session.</p><p>Not <em>him</em>, though. Never him.</p><p>It’s him who the nurses call when he is at his worst. When frustration gets the better of him and he feels like shattering every bottle, ripping off every line that’s keeping his vitals stable. He stays the night when they’ll let him, and he’s there to shush Alasdair back to sleep when he’s afraid to close his eyes and too proud to admit that what he fears the most are not the dreams but the possibility that he might slip away again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Last Christmas he bought him a first edition from this author or another, can’t remember (ha!) and they were snowed in for two days. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>For Alasdair’s birthday they took a weekend trip to Beachy Head, were soaked to the bone, and had to run back to the B&amp;B covered in sea brine and rain. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Alasdair was driving one night, and he was in the passenger seat. He was in the passenger seat and his head was resting against the window. It’s late, and he’s driving carefully; they don’t run a red light but someone else does and then… and then…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where is…?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He has to squeeze his eyes shut to tune out the white noise in his head. When he opens them, it is to a scoff softened by a smile, and a glass of watered pressed into his hand.</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>Alasdair drains it in three quick gulps, and begrudgingly swallows one of the pills on his bedside—dry, just to be contrary. It is small enough, and it does not leave a bitter taste in his mouth like most of the others. Sugar coated. When Alasdair is done, he takes the glass back from him without a word.</p><p>It should unsettle him; how silent he is. But in the short time he's been lucid enough to be present every time there is someone in the room with him, he's come to appreciate it.</p><p>The others who’ve been by try to fill in the gaps for him. They’ll talk endlessly about who he is (Alasdair the man) and what he does. They talk about a shop he doesn’t remember owning and dates he isn’t sure he would remember even without the new scars behind his ear, where his hair has been shaved and is only just beginning to grow back. The bolder of the lot press him for recognition, repeat their names as though it would make a difference (does it?) while Alasdair can only shake his head.</p><p>It has been four days and Alasdair is almost sure that he hasn’t heard the man’s name yet. And he has not asked, him or the nurses. It feels dangerous. Like getting an answer would tip them over and send them both crashing down.</p><p>So he doesn’t. Only takes his help when it is offered, and the kindness of his silence when he needs it.</p><p>It’s an unfortunate reminder of what his life has become when a nurse walks in with a tray and too many questions that make Alasdair’s cheeks burn with shame. Nothing he’d like to answer with another person in the room. The man is quick to busy himself with putting his bedside table to rights while he lists all of the ways in which his body is failing him. Alasdair feels a wave of unguarded gratefulness for the illusion of privacy it awards him.</p><p>He doesn’t pay much mind to what he’s telling the nurse—they are short, impersonal queries he’s trained himself to answer almost mechanically. He lets his thoughts drift between each one instead, waiting for the nurse to finish noting down his answers, and listening to her fiddle with the new vials on her tray and a paper cup of yet more pills he does not want.</p><p>The nurse starts making some small talk, talking about the weather for all he knows, as she prepares a needle and (casually, very casually) places a blue tablet in his hand. It’s difficult to follow along when it is more than one person talking, so he settles for glaring at the offending pill until she nudges his shoulder in a light warning. Swallowing when he’s tense pulls on the muscles in his neck the wrong way and he winces.</p><p>If she notices that he is barely paying attention as she explains what she’s injecting into his IV drip she doesn’t let on. It is not so much that she’s used to dealing with him when he’s foggy and more to do with the fact that she’s busy complimenting the man on… on…</p><p>Alasdair’s eyes catch on the ring the man is wearing on the middle finger of his right hand.</p><p>Something shifts out of place in his chest. </p><p>“Such fine silver!” She’s saying, no regard for the subtle way in which the man angles his hand away, shifting his grip on a book he’s placing closer to where Alasdair might reach it. How there is a suddenly nervous slant to his shoulders. “I’ve always wanted a Claddagh myself but after my sister kept my mother’s it never felt right to purchase one brand new. I keep hinting to my husband that I’d like one but he’s thick as a wall, that one. For the gesture of it if nothing else. And oh, but you’re wearing it a bit oddly, love, why not slip it on your ring finger when—”</p><p>“He can’t.”</p><p>Alasdair’s voice startles him as much as it seems to startle them.</p><p>He doesn’t look up, keeps his eyes fixed on the ring as the man shifts closer—careful. Like he’s giving him time to organise his thought and, Alasdair reasons, he might as well because his throat tightens something awful when a quick glance upwards has him meeting lovely green eyes, shining with a tentative hope. It’s too much, all at once, and it takes a hand in his squeezing tight to steady him. To quiet the barrage of thoughts in his head enough that he can focus on one.</p><p>
  <em>He gave him the ring in Euston Station as a promise when they were still twenty minutes shy of nine hours away from home. A heirloom much too small for Alasdair’s hands and too loose for his—so ill-suited for both that it’s a perfect fit. It slips off his ring finger that very same day and they almost lose it on the tracks, so he starts wearing it on his middle finger instead. Alasdair could recognise the smoothed-over details by touch alone. </em>
</p><p>“It’s too wide.” He manages to whisper, unmoored by the sudden wave of emotion washing over him.</p><p>
  <em>Arthur.</em>
</p><p>“Alasdair?” Arthur’s voice is tight, and beloved.</p><p>Alasdair feels like he should laugh, eyes burning with relief. He presses himself unabashedly into Arthur’s embrace when it comes, both of them tangled awkwardly and holding each other as close as they can in a hospital bed. </p><p><em>Arthur</em>.</p><p>The name settles warm and secure in his chest. When he whispers it Arthur's shoulders hitch with a sob.</p><p>
  <em>Arthur.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Once upon a time, this short one-shot had a sequel.</p><p>Please drop me a comment! It'll make my day &lt;3<br/>You can find me on tumblr @honey-spice-plaid</p></blockquote></div></div>
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